News | Fone Arena - Part 2484

LG G Flex to go on sale in Korea from November 12th, video shows off the flexible body

LG G Flex Korea

LG Electronics has announced that the company’s latest smartphone, the G Flex would go on sale in their home ground Korea from November 12th. The company’s first phone with a flexible display was announced last month, and packs a 6-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD Curved Curved Plastic OLED display from LG Display that vertically concave from top to bottom with a radius of 700mm, powered by a 2.26 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor and runs on Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean). It has a 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera. It packs a 3500 mAh curved battery developed by LG Chem. Continue reading “LG G Flex to go on sale in Korea from November 12th, video shows off the flexible body”

Oppo R819 now available in Midnight Black variant

Oppo R819, a super thin and compact offering from the Chinese company, is now available in a midnight black colour variant. We had reviewed the device earlier and found it to be quite nice for the price it comes at, but we were also wary of the device’s build, which was glossy and white. Seems like Oppo has fixed our complaints with the midnight black version which looks way more slicker than the original white version. From the looks of the press image, it seems that the black version will be matte, with the sides still sporting a nice chrome strip. In short, personally, I would have liked the midnight black variant more than the white.

Continue reading “Oppo R819 now available in Midnight Black variant”

Intex Aqua i7 Benchmarks

Intex launched the Aqua i7, the company’s latest smartphone in India back in September. We already brought you the unboxing of the device, here we have the benchmarks of the smartphone. This would compete with other devices with full HD screen in the Indian smartphone race. It is powered by a quad-core MediaTek 6589T processor clocked at 1.5 GHz with PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU. It has a 5-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) full HD display with Gorilla glass protection and runs on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). Let’s find out how this compete with other devices in range of synthetic benchmark tests.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCE_POoEERw Continue reading “Intex Aqua i7 Benchmarks”

BlackBerry abandons deal with Fairfax, Thorsten Heins gets replaced by John S Chen as interim CEO

We’d reported some time back that BlackBerry was all set to be bought over by a consortium led by Fairfax Financials. The company today announced that it is backing away from the deal and will instead switch over to Plan B. This is likely due to the inability to raise a higher a bid for the company which is suspected to be the aim altogether behind the Fairfax bid. BlackBerry is now looking to raise $1 Billion in cash and will be replacing CEO Thorsten Heins. John S Chen, former CEO of Sybase will be taking over as interim CEO while the board looks for a replacement. The company will raise the money with a private placement of convertible debentures and its largest investor, Fairfax Financials will take up $250 million of the debentures. There were rumors that Qualcomm amongst others was about to bid for the dying company but it looks like that deal didn’t go through either. The next few months should be very interesting as we keep a track of what exactly will happen to the iconic brand. BlackBerry is expected to burn through its $2.6 billion cash pile in about 18 months.

[Via – Reuters]

Motorola Moto G launch event set for November 13th, coming to India?

Motorola Moto G launch invite

Motorola has officially announced that the Moto G, the company’s new mid-range Android smartphone would be unveiled on November 13th, after some rumors. In a tweet Motorola Mobility says, “Time to say hola, olá, g’day, hallo, bonjour, namastē, hello to #MotoG” which includes greetings in several languages in different parts of the world such as Spanish, Portuguese, Australian, German, French, Hindi and English. The Motorola Moto X that was launched back in August is only available in the U.S. Looks like Motorola is planning to launch this mid-range smartphone in other markets where the Moto X is not available. Continue reading “Motorola Moto G launch event set for November 13th, coming to India?”

Samsung Galaxy S3 gets official Android 4.3 update in Ireland, International roll-out to follow soon

Samsung has just updated their current flagship – Samsung Galaxy S4 with Android 4.3 and now it looks like the South Korean company has started pushing out the Android 4.3 update to their yesteryear flagship – Samsung Galaxy S3. Samsung Galaxy S3 was launched with Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich and it received an update to Android 4.1.2 sometime back. The company skipped Android 4.2 for Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2 and are directly updating their yesteryear flagships to Android 4.3 Jellybean.

Samsung-Galaxy-S3-1 Continue reading “Samsung Galaxy S3 gets official Android 4.3 update in Ireland, International roll-out to follow soon”

Nokia, Samsung extend patent license deal for five years

Nokia has announced that Samsung has extended the patent license deal with the company for five years, before it expires at the end of 2013. Samsung will pay additional compensation for the period commencing from January 1, 2014 onwards based on the agreement. There’s no word yet on how much the deal is worth, but Nokia says that compensation amount of this deal would finally be settled during 2015. Continue reading “Nokia, Samsung extend patent license deal for five years”

iBall Andi 4Di+ with 4-inch display, Android 4.2 gets priced at Rs. 6399

iBall Andi 4Di Plus

iBall Andi 4Di+, successor of the Andri 4Di that was launched back in July has surfaced on the official website. It has a 4-inch (480×800 pixels) capacitive touch screen display, powered by a 1.3 GHz dual-core Cortex A7 processor and runs on Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean). It has a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a 0.3-megapixel (VGA) front-facing camera. It has dual SIM support with dual standby similar to other iBall Andi smartphones and packs a 1700 mAh battery. It has Flip to Mute and Auto Call Recording features.

Continue reading “iBall Andi 4Di+ with 4-inch display, Android 4.2 gets priced at Rs. 6399”

Lava Iris 503 and Iris 352e with Android 4.2 now available for Rs. 8990 and Rs. 4290

Lava Iris 503

Lava Iris 503 and Iris 352e, two new Android smartphones in the Iris series are available from online retailer Flipkart. The Iris 503 is the successor of the Iris 502 that went on sale earlier this year. It packs a 5.0-inch (960 x 540 pixels) capacitive touch screen display, powered by a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, while the entry-level 2G smartphone, Iris 352e comes with a 3.5 inch (320 x 480 pixels) capacitive touch screen display and is powered by a 1 GHz dual-core processor. Both these phones run on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) and comes with dual SIM support with dual standby. Continue reading “Lava Iris 503 and Iris 352e with Android 4.2 now available for Rs. 8990 and Rs. 4290”

Apple iOS Engineering VP Henri Lamiraux leaves the company

Henri Lamiraux

Few weeks after the launch of iOS 7, Apple’s Vice President of Engineering for iOS Henri Lamiraux has left the company, according to a report from 9to5 Mac. He has mentioned on his Facebook page that the has left the job at Apple to retire. He joined Apple in 1990 as a Mac software engineer. He was moved iOS team around 2005, working with the team for 8 years as director of software engineering for iOS and senior director of engineering for iOS. Continue reading “Apple iOS Engineering VP Henri Lamiraux leaves the company”

Motorola Moto G detailed specifications surface, 4.5-inch 720p display and quad-core Snapdragon processor

Motorola Moto G leak

Motorola Moto G surfaced online last week, thanks to @evleaks, now GSMArena has got hold of detailed specifications and the price of the phone. Earlier rumor hinted at a 4.7-inch 720p display and a 1.5 GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU, the new leak reveals that the smartphone would feature a 4.5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) edge-to-edge display at 329 ppi with Corning Gorilla Glass protection, powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor and run on Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean). It is expected to feature a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, 720p HD video recording at 30fps and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera. Looking at these specifications, this looks like a mid-range smartphone. Continue reading “Motorola Moto G detailed specifications surface, 4.5-inch 720p display and quad-core Snapdragon processor”

Nokia is back in the smartphone race as it becomes the fourth largest smartphone brand in US

Nokia posted its Q3 2013 sales report a week back and it showed signs that the Finnish mobile phone giant is slowly fighting its way back into the smartphone race. Nokia saw a successfully Q3 2013 where it sold 8.8 million Lumia smartphones which was 1.4 million more than its previous quarter – Q2 2013 where it managed to sell around 7.4 million smartphones. During the course of Q3, the biggest gain for Nokia was the increase in Lumia smartphone sales in USA.

During Q2 2013, Nokia sold less than half a million Lumia smartphones in US and that numbers hugely improved as Nokia was able to sell nearly 1.4 million smartphones in USA during Q3 2013. The entry range smartphones like Lumia 520 were the driving force behind Nokia’s surge in the smartphone market in US.

Continue reading “Nokia is back in the smartphone race as it becomes the fourth largest smartphone brand in US”

Nexus 5 comes with Qualcomm QFE1100 Envelope Tracking chip for 20% more battery life

Google-LG-Nexus-5-16

Google released the Nexus 5 last week, that is coming soon to India. We already know that the phone is powered by the latest Snapdragon 800 chip from Qualcomm. The company has announced that Nexus 5 also features the Qualcomm QFE1100 Envelope Tracking chip, the innovative Qualcomm RF360 front-end that allows OEMs to develop a single, global 4G LTE design. The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 that was launched back in September was the first phone to use the world’s first envelope tracking (ET) technology for 3G/4G LTE devices. Continue reading “Nexus 5 comes with Qualcomm QFE1100 Envelope Tracking chip for 20% more battery life”

Airtel iPhone 5S Plans

airtel-iphone-5s-plans

The Apple iPhone 5S and the 5C launched in India on Friday, November 1st, even Airtel launched these devices as the company promised. It also revealed plans with free local minutes, local and national SMS and 3G data. These plans start at Rs. 300, which might vary based on the circle. The Apple iPhone 5S costs Rs.. 53,500, Rs. 62,500 and Rs. 71,500 for the 16, 32 and 64GB variants. These plans are almost similar to last year’s iPhone 5 plans.

Continue reading “Airtel iPhone 5S Plans”

Xolo A600 with 4.5-inch qHD display, Android 4.2 launched for Rs. 8199

Xolo A600

Xolo has launched A600, a mid-range phone in the A Series. It appeared on the official website earlier this week along with the Q900 and packs a 4.5-inch qHD (960 x 540 pixels) capacitive touch screen IPS display, powered by a 1.3 GHz dual-core MediaTek MT6572W processor with Mali 400MP GPU and runs on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). It comes with dual SIM support with dual standby, similar to other A Series phones from Xolo. Continue reading “Xolo A600 with 4.5-inch qHD display, Android 4.2 launched for Rs. 8199”